A lot of people have seen The Nutcracker. Some percentage of those have seen The Nutcracker once a year since they were 8 and could dance the “Waltz Of The Flowers” with their eyes closed. After a sold-out 2009 season, Tandy Beal’s Mixed Nutz! The Nutcracker Remixed is back to claim its place as a Nutcracker that replicates no other: it’s highly unlikely that the average audience includes folks who fondly remember juggling an umbrella on each foot simultaneously with another on each hand for good measure.
The storyline still contains a Clara and her eccentric nutcracker-gifting uncle, and it can be spotted throughout the performance if one has a good memory for Tchaikovsky. The music is performed live by onstage peanut gallery and a cappella group SoVoSo, which has reinvented favorites like “Spanish Tea” and “Dance Of The Sugarplum Fairy” into jazzy numbers more suited for the acrobats and clowns.
Stock characters have been reworked to suit Beal’s own vision. “Arabian Coffee” is the sensual side of the dream translated into the art of aerial silks, and features acrobat Kerry Kresinski suspended 30 feet off the ground by nothing but the silken ropes she loops around her body. A troupe of Mexican folklorico dancers makes an entrance, as well as Beal herself as the Sugarplum Fairy, draped in winglike fabrics and escorted by a troupe of moth-girls.
The dancing is interspersed with juggling and clowning, and the shrieks of laughter from the under-7 crowd pronounce these practitioners more successful than their average circus cousins. Aside from a somewhat incongruous foray into projector images documenting the travails of the SoVoSo crew, the performance flows effortlessly through tumbling children and acrobats with muscles the size of softballs. There is nothing lacking in the feats of strength category, with a notable performance by Xiao Hong Weng and Jennings McCown’s gravity-defying balancing act.
At the end of a two-hour visual feast, the performers take their bows and make their closing speeches, and Sugarplum Tandy shies away behind a cut-out cloud, smiling and observing all in her moth dress. The dances were choreographed by Beal, the acts were directed by Beal and her annual Cirque De Nutcracker succeeds again in shaking loose the holiday magic.
MIXED NUTZ! THE NUTCRACKER REMIXED runs Fridays 7pm (with special 2pm matinee Nov. 26), Saturdays at 2pm and 7pm and Sundays at 2pm through Dec 5; Theater Arts Mainstage, UCSC. Tickets $17.50–$32.50; 831.459.2159 or www.santacruztickets.com.
